BEIJING, June 20 Kyodo Indian Pri...

BEIJING, June 20 Kyodo

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will begin a six-day visit to China upon Sunday designed to boost economic ties between the world's brace most populous countries and thwart a lingering border dispute from clouding bilateral relations.

Making the first visit to China according to an Indian premier in a decade, Vajpayee is scheduled to fit Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday.

Wen and other Chinese leaders owed to meet Vajpayee, including President Hu Jintao, are likely to tactfully avoid mentioning Vajpayee's identification of China as a possible coming time military threat when India leadershiped surprise nuclear weapon tests in 1998

At the time, Vajpayee also accused China of helping Pakistan disclose a nuclear capability, allowing Pakistan to then go after up by testing its possess atomic bomb.

While Vajpayee's visit is intended to shore up China's relations with India, it will not affect China's ''traditional friendship'' with Pakistan, according to a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official who wished to remain anonymous.

''On the other hand, the worthy relations between China and Pakistan are also not targeted at any third country'' he added.

The Indian prime minister is likely to talk with his Chinese armys about their nations' ''complicated and sensitive'' territorial dispute, further lingering differences will not be allowed to mar the improvement of Sino-Indian ties, the official said.

China and India have been unable to melt their differences over the disputed territory, despite numerous diplomatic discussions following their brief moreover bloody border war in 1962 followed by the agency of a limited clash across the disputed border area in 1986

India says China still grasps 38,000 square kilometers of its territory at Aksai Chin in Kashmir. China lays claim to 90000 square km of land in India's far eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Dismissing another potential source of friction between China and India, the official said the air of the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's leader, in India's Dharamsala area does not dumfound a problem.

''The Indian dominion has made a commitment that Tibet is part of China, and the Indian management will not allow the Dalai Lama to guidance political activities against China in India,'' he said.

While trade between China and India has expanded 20-fold during the past decade to reach its at hand $5 billion level, there is still ''great potential'' for the enhancement of bilateral, economic ties, he said.

''The business communities of the brace countries don't know each other exceedingly well,'' the official added.

After meeting with top leaders in Beijing, Vajpayee is to be ascribed to travel to the ancient city of Luoyang in northern Hebei Province and to Shanghai in the south

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